So, many of you have probably seen the famous picture of Tienanmen Square where the guy is standing in the road with his hand out, about to be rolled over by a row of large tanks...Sorry I couldn't get a better version, but I am hiding behind the Great Firewall of China.General knowledge in the States says that the poor guy was flattened flatter than flat things that are flat, while the tanks kept rolling on, presumably to flatten other people into flat things. All of this of course raises the important question, did these people--tank drivers or now-presumably-flat people, eat pancakes for breakfast? But aside from that lighter note, there is another important question: was anybody actually run over?
It will come as no surprise to you that my Chinese teacher was shocked into stuttering when we (me and my classmates) boldly asserted that the man in the picture had been ruthlessly turned into a pancake. She claimed that he had walked away. Of course, us being the brilliant and informed, unbiased, and pure champions of truth throughout the world, we of course informed her that she didn't know what was going on in her own country and that she was wrong. We said, it was quite clear from the picture that the fellow had not faired well. She eventually came round to see our point of view.
However, there is some sort of catch. See, I had the misfortune a few days before this to be reading in one of our illustrious textbooks for our history class here, and this textbook (published in America, imported by our program) had the same picture in it. Thing was, the caption said something entirely different. The caption said that the man had held the tanks at bay, tempting fate, for several seconds before being rushed off by his friends and hid. No one knows what became of him.
Now you may begin to see what I'm getting at here. It's very well and good for me to say that I know that at Tienanmen there was this massacre and a whole bunch of people where killed, including this one fellow who was run over by a tank. However, it seems just as well that this young woman who teaches us Chinese can also say that the man was not run over. While my classmates and I were jumping around ridiculing her government for its horrible practices, noting her own ignorance on these matters (due of course to a government which censors everything) and finally explaining to her what really happened, it seems we might have been just as much dupes as we pitied her for being. We make a choice, right? We choose to believe a story. I wouldn't ever say that this means there isn't any version of the story that is correct--there is.
Not that we are dupes of any particular government or organization, but simply dupes of ourselves. It's nice and hunky dory to imagine that we have this conception of how things worked in some other country many years ago, but conceptions like these happen to be built on a fairly shaky mesh of rumors. Why is my classmate's firm belief that the guy in the photo was flattened not as naive as my teacher's belief that he wasn't? In her case the obvious answer is, well the Chinese government is telling her the story which makes it look the best; as for my classmates, it seems that they got there story from...from where? From people who were at odds or at least have some interest in making the Chinese government appear less than pristine.
But someone is asking, what does it matter? Who cares whether this one guy was run over or not, the point is that there was a massacre at Tienanmen. Yes, I'm not doubting that. But it seems to me it's more than easy for us to hold up China and say "Ah, this land--they have no rights, or they don't have the same rights, they don't have freedom." The funny thing is, when I've asked people, they all say of course they have freedom. It's almost an insulting question. If you think that isn't so, take a moment to ponder the feelings that have been going through your mind for the past few paragraphs. I've almost been saying that you don't have freedom.
The Tienanmen case is just a sign of the larger issue at hand: almost every time we come to discuss media, governments, economics, or freedoms in class, the lines are drawn. My teacher on one side, fairly loudly defending her country, and my classmates on the other telling her how the government in China is 1984's Big Brother. In fact, almost all the terms my classmates use at some point come from this book or the conspiracy theories around it. They say that China's government doesn't allow free speech (it owns all media outlets), that it censors books, movies, and other things far too heavily, that they have been brutalizing and arresting people who protest. My teacher's answers are always logical arguments that just happen to fit our conception of someone who has been duped by the government. She says if they did that it was for the good of everyone, or if they do this it is for the greater safety of the population. I really don't like these sorts of arguments--but that's because I have this inbred distrust of the government. I'm not going to blame George Orwell, although perhaps I should, but I wish I could go back before that book was published and so how much this distrust of the government was alive in people.
You can see the same sort of confusion over issues when religion enters the picture. It doesn't take long to realize that there are a whole bunch of people out there peddling the line that religion in China is as free as anywhere else in the world. But there are just as many, if not more, going around bewailing the dangerous and threats and curtailments of religious freedom in China. I've talked with citizens here who tell me that there is nothing more free than religion in China, that even those once furtive "house churches" are coming out into the open and not being troubled in the least. But I've talked to people who tell me the exact opposite. That they are in extreme danger, that they have to move every year in order to avoid persecution, and that they often experience mistreatment at the hands of officials. Tell me which one you believe...why? I often find I believe whichever viewpoint I believe because it's the most pleasant one. That makes sense, yeah?
If there is a point here, it's probably this: that everybody wants to think there government is not as bad as everyone else's. And that when you come down to it, we don't have too much to go on either way. The question comes down to who I'm going to believe for my facts, because inevitably I have to believe somebody.
